Ohio State University professor of geography speaking at Ashland University for Environmental Lectur

Wednesday

Sep 25, 2013 at 5:00 AM

Ashland University's 22nd annual Environmental Lecture Series features the theme of "Environmental and Human Health in Latin America" and will kick off Thursday, Oct. 3, with a presentation by Kendra McSweeny, associate professor of geography at The Ohio State University.

McSweeny will speak on the topic "Drug-Trafficking and Deforestation in Central America" at the 7:30 p.m. event in Ronk Lecture Hall of the Dwight Schar College of Education. All events in the series are free and open to the public.

McSweeney is a geographer specializing in the relationship between people and forests. She has conducted research for 20 years in Honduras, where she has tracked the resilience of forest-dependent native communities to climate-related and other exogenous shocks, including drug trafficking. She also has studied the links between demographic change and struggles around territory in the Ecuadorian Amazon.

At OSU, she teaches courses on Latin America, fieldwork, research and professionalization, demography and environment.

"There has been relatively little attention to the ways in which narco-trafficking is transforming the Central American countryside. In fact, the flow of drugs through remote, biodiverse regions is having a profound and devastating effect on the region's forests; Guatemala and Honduras now have some of the world's highest deforestation rates," she said in a released statement.

"Narco-trafficking is also contributing to the massive displacement and impoverishment of indigenous peoples and peasant smallholders across the region."

Drawing from long-term research in eastern Honduras (a major trafficking hub), this talk will detail how drug trafficking has this effect, and will review the ways in which these dynamics are linked to the ways in which the U.S. chooses to wage its "war on drugs."

Patricia Saunders, associate professor of biology and director of the environmental science program, explained the reasoning behind the series theme this year.

"Our choice of topics this year is intended to complement the biennial symposium organized by our College of Arts and Sciences, that this year is titled 'Against Indifference: Engaging Latin America and the Caribbean,' " she said in a released statement.

"Together, these two series encourage immersion in this regional focus, with the Environmental Lecture Series offering perspectives from experts in human ecology, policy and scientific study related to specific environmental issues."

Saunders said about 589 million people live in the region that is identified as Latin America, including South America, Central America and the Caribbean. Most populations are concentrated in coastal regions, while the interiors of South America and northern Mexico are much more sparsely populated.

The Environmental Lecture Series was established at AU after the Environmental Science program was implemented in 1991-92. The lecture series was designed to support the program by allowing students, faculty and members of northcentral Ohio communities to interact with leaders in environmental science and policy.

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